In today's video, I'm in the Pacific Northwest...
Cruising through Puget Sound with American Cruise Lines.
Highlights of the cruise include a Jet Boat adventure...
And a ferry ride in to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada...
Where I visited world-famous Butchart Gardens...
One of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.
This was a really scenic cruise...
In a beautiful part of the United States...
With an American crew...
On an American made cruise ship.
I'm Jim Zim. This was my third cruise with American Cruise Lines, and my 56th cruise overall.
It started in Seattle, Washington.
I booked the pre-cruise package...
Which put me in to Seattle the day before the cruise started...
So that I would have time to have a little fun down here at the very tourist-oriented waterfront area.
Including Miner's Landing at Pier 57, home of the Seattle Great Wheel...
The iconic Ferris Wheel with fantastic views of downtown and Elliot Bay.
I'm a licensed commercial drone pilot...
So, all the aerial video clips you'll see in my video today...
This is not stock footage supplied by the cruise line…
All of this is my original footage that I shot myself.
Our cruise ship, American Constellation, wasn't docked downtown...
ACL provided a bus to get us from our downtown hotel...
Over to this pier on the north side of Seattle, in an area known as Ballard.
I got a kick out of seeing all the seals that were sunbathing on the breakwater that was next to our ship.
On our first day, we cruised up the Puget Sound for several hours...
And we spotted orcas swimming in the distance.
All we ever saw of them were their fins, though.
They were so far away that I really couldn't get good video of them.
I enjoyed sitting out on my balcony and seeing the beautiful views as we sailed north.
One of the highlights was seeing this beautiful lighthouse along the coast.
This is a time lapse video I made from my balcony as we finished up our first day of sailing on Puget Sound.
You can see we had a mix of sun and clouds on this day.
But we got lucky... we never really had any significant rain during the week.
During spring time in the Pacific Northwest, if you don't get any rain on your vacation... that's a win!
You're looking at our arrival in to our first destination: Anacortes, Washington.
We docked at Curtis Wharf, which is in an industrial part of town, and isn't much to look at, but...
It's actually a very good location because...
It's just a very short walk from here to the touristy part of Anacortes.
I'll switch to an aerial view from my drone now, to give you a better look at Anacortes.
If you look to the left of our cruise ship, you'll see a couple of cranes...
And several large boats, around the same size as our cruise ship.
That's a shipyard that builds and refurbishes marine vessels...
Including that ferry boat that was right in front of our cruise ship.
From the deck of our ship, we had a very good view of that ferry boat.
They had it lifted up out of the water for some repairs...
And it was really interesting for me to look at it as they worked on it.
The next day, for our first excursion, we took a bus over to nearby Whidbey Island...
Where we boarded a jet boat, that would take us out in search of wildlife.
We saw an eagle's nest, but the eagles were nowhere to be seen.
And we saw a lot of seals...
But we were really hoping to see some whales...
And we spent a lot of time looking for them at various spots...
But, unfortunately, never did find any on this particular day.
Still, it was fun riding in the jet boat and having a look around the area.
Later that day, back in Anacortes, the wind really picked up.
And by the next morning, when we were scheduled to sail off to our next destination...
The winds were so strong that it wouldn't have been safe for our ship to sail.
And it was way too windy to fly the drone, so I'm showing you video that I shot the day before...
To help you visualize our position, tied up safely at the pier in Anacortes for a second day in a row.
So, we missed our scheduled visit to Friday Harbor, as well as a whale watching excursion we had scheduled.
Most of the passengers just stayed aboard the ship and enjoyed ship life.
But I decided to head ashore on my own, in search of pizza.
And I found a good one at Village Pizza, in downtown Anacortes.
As we look at a little more aerial video of Anacortes that I shot the day before it got too windy to fly...
I want to just mention that if you're interested in booking a cruise with any cruise line...
You should feel free to use the services of my travel agent, Caitlin Gallagher.
It's not about price.
In most cases, a travel agent doesn't get you a better price...
Than you could get by booking it yourself, directly with the cruise line.
It's about getting someone else to do the work for you!
American Cruise Lines' customer service is very good, but...
If you've ever tried to call some of the other cruise lines...
You know, the ones with the mega cruise ships...
You know that you can end up on hold for a really long time.
And you may end up talking to someone with an accent that's difficult to understand.
It's much easier, and far more satisfying to talk to Caitlin...
And let her be the one to deal with the cruise lines.
The next morning, the winds had died down enough for us to safely get sailing again.
And we headed towards our next destination: Port Angeles, Washington.
I was looking forward to an excursion that would take us in to Olympic National Park.
You can see the snow-capped Olympic Mountain range, which was quite beautiful.
Unfortunately, by the time we got to just off the coast of Port Angeles...
The winds had picked up again, and someone made a decision…
I don't know if it was our Captain, or the local port authorities...
That it wouldn't be safe for us to dock in these conditions.
So, they had to scramble a bit and we sailed down the coast to a protected area...
Where we could just slowly cruise around all night until it would be safe to dock in Port Angeles the next morning.
When we did finally make it, the next day, to the dock in Port Angeles...
I wanted to put my drone up in the air and get some aerial shots of the ship and the town, but...
Much to my surprise, I discovered that we were now in restricted military airspace.
The Whidbey Island Naval Air Station is nearby, and due to frequent air operations out of the naval base...
Drones can't fly in a huge restricted area that extends throughout this part of Puget Sound.
In fact, for the next several days of our cruise we'd be in this restricted airspace...
And my drone would be completely grounded.
But in spite of that, this ended up being the best day of the entire trip...
Because I went on a fantastic excursion today, to Victoria, in British Columbia, Canada.
To get to Victoria would require a ferry ride on this ferry, the MV Coho...
Across the strait of Juan de Fuca, which separates Canada and the United States here in the Pacific Northwest.
It was fun to walk all around the ferry and explore it during the ride over.
This was actually my very first ferry ride!
As much as I like cruise ships, you'd think I'd have been on a ferry long before now, but...
The opportunity just never came up until today...
So, I had a lot of fun exploring the ferry, since it was an all-new experience for me.
There were cars and trucks down on the lower deck...
And up above, plenty of seating for all of us passengers...
Either at tables...
Or in chairs up at the front of the ferry, with views of everything ahead of us.
There was also food and drink available for purchase...
And I liked that the tables in this area had cupholders built in to them...
To help keep your drinks from spilling when the ship rolled with the seas...
Which it did quite a bit!
This ferry ride is probably not a trip you'd want to take if you're prone to seasickness!
The ferry makes frequent trips throughout the day...
Back and forth between Port Angeles and Victoria.
In light of the fact that our cruise ship wasn't allowed to dock in Port Angeles the night before, due to high winds...
I asked one of the crew members how often the ferry service gets suspended due to weather...
And he told me it operates 365 days a year, no matter what the conditions are.
I spent a lot of time in this area of the ferry...
Which was outside in the fresh air, but was wind protected.
It was a nice warm day, as long as you stayed out of the wind, and I loved being outside.
But my favorite spot of the ferry was actually the very front of the ferry...
Especially as we got further along, and Victoria started to come in to view...
I loved that they allow people to go all the way up to the bow of the ferry.
As we got closer and closer to Victoria, the views from the bow were just fantastic.
Hang on now for just a second. I'm going to show you why I made the trip to Victoria in the first place.
It turned out to be the highlight of the entire trip for me.
I'll show you, right after this.
So, the reason that I took the ferry over to Victoria was to visit the world-famous Butchart Gardens…
An incredibly beautiful place on 55 acres just north of Victoria.
I don't quite know how to describe it other than to say that...
If heaven exists, it probably looks a lot like this!
Butchart Gardens is so large...
That they have to have a staff of 50 full-time gardeners just to keep everything looking good.
It's been designated as a national historic site of Canada...
And over a million visitors come to see Butchart Gardens every year.
There is a lot to it. I spent a couple of hours just walking around and taking it all in.
And there's so much that I want to share with you...
It's too much for this video, so I'll do another video just about Butchart Gardens...
And that will show up here on my YouTube channel about a week after this one that you're watching now.
The next day, our ship was docked in Port Townsend, Washington...
A town with a very interesting history.
Back in the 1800s, Port Townsend was really in its heyday.
It was a very desirable place for shipping...
Because of the very gentle way that the land slopes down in to the water.
That made it very easy for boats to just run up in to the soft sandy beach, bow first.
No dock required.
But eventually, of course, they did build a dock...
Known as the Union Wharf, which is where our ship was tied up.
The first version of Union Wharf was built in 1867.
And it remained in constant use for over a hundred years, until 1981...
When a heavy truck crashed through the aging structure.
The wharf was out of commission for quite a few years after that, but...
Eventually the old wharf was demolished and this all-new wharf was built here at the same location in 1996.
The waterfront area of Port Townsend is perfect for cruise ship tourists.
There are all sorts of interesting shops and restaurants along this main street, near the pier.
I enjoyed a burger, fries, and a shake at this 50's style diner.
And I spent quite a bit of time just walking around the town of Port Townsend...
Enjoying the Victorian architecture of the homes...
And visiting a farmer's market that they were having on this particular day.
They have a lot of beautiful Azaleas and Rhododendrons in Port Townsend.
In fact, the Rhododendron is the official state flower of Washington.
And the day we visited, Port Townsend was having an event called RhodyFest!
Something I really liked about Port Townsend was that they had put up a lot of plaques all around town...
That explained the history of the town and the significance of certain things around the town.
For example, this bell tower here was the town's fire alarm, back in the day.
If this bell rang, the members of the volunteer fire department knew to report for duty.
The plaques all around town made it great for visitors like me to walk around without a guide...
And learn all about the history of this very interesting place.
During our visit to Port Townsend, the cruise line offered a little side excursion.
So, I got on a tour bus and headed down to another historic spot nearby, Port Gamble.
Back in the 1800s and early 1900s, at this location that you're seeing here...
There was a huge lumber mill.
Demand for lumber was huge at that time.
The lumber mill in Port Gamble supplied lumber to California and Oregon...
As well as to many foreign countries around the world.
The huge forest of trees here in Washington on the Olympic Peninsula offered an abundant source of timber...
So that's why they built the lumber mill right here in Port Gamble.
Of course, it's long gone now...
Since the Olympic peninsula is now a national park, and the trees can't be cut down.
But there's a really interesting museum here in Port Gamble that takes you back to those days.
The museum had some nice displays that recreated things from the 1800s, such as this hotel.
I also really liked this re-creation of a Captain's quarters of an old sailing ship from that era.
There were all sorts of things in the museum that struck a chord with me...
Such as this old telephone switchboard...
And an old hand cart, from an era long before forklifts were a thing.
The next day, we were finally out from under the restricted military airspace around Whidbey Island...
So, I was finally able to get my drone up in the air again, as our ship headed towards our next destination...
The cute little town of Poulsbo, Washington...
Which is located at the north end of Liberty Bay, a sheltered arm of Puget Sound.
You can see the mountains of the Olympic Peninsula in the distance as our ship...
American Constellation, made its way towards Poulsbo.
It's incredibly beautiful along here...
And some of the houses we saw as we sailed through here made me very jealous!
There was no way for a ship of our size to dock in Poulsbo...
So, for the first time this cruise we got to use the little tender that our ship carries around with her.
The tender took us to the marina in Poulsbo, which is centrally located right next to the downtown shopping district.
You'll notice a very Scandinavian look to the town.
Poulsbo, was settled back in the 1880s by immigrants from Norway and other Scandinavian countries...
Who liked it here because the climate is a lot like what they were used to back home.
And the town's name, Poulsbo, is based on a town of the same name in Norway.
They just happened to be having a special event the day we visited.
They called the event Viking Fest.
A salute to the town's Norwegian heritage.
As we look at some of the things I saw as I walked around Viking Fest, and downtown Poulsbo...
I think this is a good time to mention that a cruise on a small ship like American Constellation...
Is a very different kind of cruise than one on one of those mega cruise ships.
This cruise, this week on Puget Sound, is a perfect example.
It's not about the ship.
People don't come on a cruise like this to just stay aboard all week and enjoy the ship's amenities.
They come on a cruise like this for the places that the ship visits.
Mega cruise ships don't go to places like this.
Only the small ships of American Cruise Lines will get you to beautiful little towns like this on Puget Sound.
I really enjoyed my week on American Constellation, cruising through Puget Sound...
And visiting a lot of cool small towns that I just never would have visited if I hadn't been on this cruise.
This was my third cruise with American Cruise Lines, and I'm really looking forward to doing another!
If you liked this video, be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel (it's free)...
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Once you subscribe, take the second step...
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That way YouTube will let you know as soon as I release my next video...
Where I will be sharing much more video that I shot at beautiful Butchart Gardens in Victoria.
I'm Jim Zim. Thanks for watching!